Butterfly - Copperband Chelmon rostratus
 

Please provide your experience in this poll:

• Use the top 9 poll questions if your fish has passed away.
• Use the bottom 7 poll questions if you currently own this fish.
• Multiple polls are allowed.
• Select the best answer to the best of your knowledge.
• Adding comments or elaborating on the cause of death in a post is encouraged.

The options are as follows:

died within 0-3 months
died within 4-6 months
died within 7-9 months
died within 10-12 months
died within 13-18 months
died within 19-24 months
died within 2-3 years
died within 3-4 years
died after 5 years +
currently alive 0-6 months
currently alive 7-12 months
currently alive over 1 year
currently alive over 2 years
currently alive over 3 years
currently alive over 4 years
currently alive 5 years +

Could not get it to eat. It takes about 2 weeks for a fish to starve to death.

I could not get mine to eat either. I had a few feather dusters in my tank, so mine took 3 weeks to starve. I tried 2 kinds of mysis, bloodworms, live clams, and live mussles. Nothing worked. Very sad to watch a fish starve itself to death.

They are a sweet fish but mine just disappeared one day after 5 months. Not sure what happened?

Have had no long term luck with any butterflyfish, especially Copperbands. Too bad since they are Irene's favourite fish.

mine has been alive just over 2 years now....eats bloodworms, mysis, ocean plankton, clam, and aiptasia

copperband
 

I have had success so far with feeding fresh/frozen mussel or clam in the shell. I find that it doesn't do so well with just mysis and needs feeding 2-3 times per day, as it doesn't eat much at one time. Now that I feed either 1 mussel or clam each day, it gets a nice fat belly. I just buy them at superstore and throw them in the freezer and cut them open before they go in the tank. I feed a bit of flake to divert the other fish... anyway for me, this is the only way I've been able to get this fish to eat enough after it polished off all my aptasia and feather dusters...in a 200 gallon...it's done a great job. Just my 2 cents worth....Karen

I tried everything under the sun and the only thing my CBB ate was blood worms. He never touched any of the aiptasia in his quarantine tank. After 3 months he was looking well. I then put him in my tank and my damn damsels killed him before I could get him back into the quarantine tank.

I've had mine for about 3 months and he eats mysis and aptasia

Beautiful fish, real tough to watch him starve.